Batch 172

Medium weight and quite spicy, with a very light cereal (bircher or wholemeal hot cross buns) touch to start with. It lifts well into more exotic elements with hints of resin, a tiny touch of menthol and apple. As it opens, you get genmaicha – roasted tea and rice – before things sweeten into runny toffee and become more waxy, with some heavy florals. Water accentuates these last qualities, adding some complexity and depth. Well rounded and nicely balanced.

A dry start, then mouth-filling with added toffee elements, but also chestnut honey and that waxiness again, which now is more about feel, while the nuts and baking spices add a mix of dryness and bright elements. In time, there’s more red fruits and a fleshier aspect. Water brings out a slightly more serious and oak-driven quality.

Nuts and apples.

Brandy casks can be hard to balance. This is a triumph, and a steal at £60.

‘Breakfast in the morning on an old copper plate.’ Concubine Rice #1.

Big, burning moor smoke plus a meaty quality like smoked pork belly (with fat), alongside some sultana and brininess, walnut oil and violet cream chocolate. In time you get box-fresh trainers and squid ink, while dilution brings out a rubbery, fatty quality without diminishing the smoke.

A very soft and quite yielding/ oily start with the dried fruits at the back. You expect a big rumbling peaty monster, but instead it is quite calm and controlled with a slightly slippery, textural quality. Things soften further with dilution, but it loses some intensity.

Smoke, rubber, citrus zest and then cracked pepper.

It’s only that slight rubbery/ oily quality that knocks it back.

 If you eat barbecue in a wet suit you can say Goodbye to Pork Pie fat.

Hotter than the oloroso and as a result, slightly harder to get into. There’s some pomegranate molasses, treacle, raisin, brine, and smoke – albeit with some rubber attached. Deepens in time. With water, things become more suet-like (spotted dick?) along with cigar smoke, seaweed and then, inexorably, a new hot water bottle.

The quite velvety PX covering smothers the tongue while still allowing the smoke to come out, thereby adding some depth and interest. The distillery oils (oil paint) are still there, but the fruits are riper. Water adds in some orange, but things do flatten.

Smoked chocolate, biscuit, but it’s also slightly rubbery.

The PX works well here.

Fruit pudding (suet and raisin if you’re interested) cooked over a peat fire under a Strange Sky.

Rounded and quite thick, there’s steak pie and gravy and distant wet earth, damp beech mould, some sweet cardboard (this is a good thing) and in time, well-hung venison that then has a black cherry sauce poured over it. A sweet, fruity element balances the earthiness. Hint of wet dog. Water pulls things deeper, adding roasting tin and some plum pudding.

Big and bold. It’s all prune and dried cherry bitterness with added clove, while the powdery tannins give structure to what is a powerfully concentrated mid-palate. It has a huge retronasal quality of allspice, clove and cocoa nibs and dry, rooty elements. Dilution adds mouthfeel and brings the chocolate elements forward.

Shifts from steak pie to mole sauce.

A hearty, rib-sticking stew of a Mortlach.

A hearty lunch after a walk in the woods, the smells of the earth Brought With The Rain.

There’s a musky, slightly funky oxidative element and just a hint of rubber bands and light minerals. Quite hot with plain oak and a yeasty note, then, weirdly, a whiff of pickled onion. In time there’s the chalky dankness of an old wine cellar. Water adds more oak and minerality.

Sweeter than you might expect with an oily quality. There is a flowery element trying to emerge, along with some spearmint. Some black pepper and frying mustard seed, then something deeper that brings to mind old hiking boots. Water brings out the oxidised aspects along with touches of old potato sack.

Firm and slightly ashy. Rubbery.

A slightly uncomfortable mix with none of fino’s inherent freshness.

Rubbery, funky Stretchin’ Out.

A little shy. There’s tropical fruit, tinned peach in syrup, nectarine juice, then rhubarb crumble with custard alongside light mace and wood shavings. In other words, mature and elegant with plenty of fruity/ beeswaxy rancio with some muguet touches. A drop of water ignites huge concentration and intensity, with passion fruit and fresh mango to the fore. It does fade relatively quickly though.

So gentle you wonder whether things are just too soft. The texture is like satin. It’s the spice which saves it (cinnamon buns, then some sumac-like brightness) by anchoring the mid-palate, allowing the almost ethereal fruits to float over the tongue. Water again gives a burst of intensity.

Gentle, fruited, then it’s gone.

This softness is at odds with the in-yer-face whiskies of today. A fleeting moment of an alternative.

A vision of The Cloths of Heaven.